How To Avoid A Climate Disaster
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
We need to get from 51 billion tonnes of CO2 every year, to 0.
We need to address all areas that create emissions: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.
Policy changes and using our own voice to change politics is the best individual solution.
🎨 Impressions
I was overall disappointed with this book. It told me nothing new about climate change and the solutions where not breakthroughs, more a retelling of preexisting ideas. It comes across as the pure basics of climate change and an overview not a new take with radical solutions.
How I Discovered It
I have followed Bill Gates work on climate change through his podcast and writing and wanted to read the full book.
Who Should Read It?
If you want an overview of the climate situation we are in, this book provides a high-level summary of the problems and solutions needed. And would be a good introductory read to the topic area.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
Remember that we need to find solutions for all five activities that emissions come from: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.
The point is that when we focus on all three things at once—technology, policies, and markets—we can encourage innovation, spark new companies, and get new products into the market fast.
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a problem as big as climate change. But you’re not powerless.
📒 Summary + Notes
The Case for Zero
The 2 numbers to know: 51 billion and zero.
51 billion is how many tons of greenhouse gases the world typically adds to the atmosphere each year. We need to get to zero.
3 things Bill Gates has become convinced of:
to avoid a climate diaster, we have to get to zero
we need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter
we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way
The case for zero: the climate is like a bath tub slowly filling with water. Even if we stop the flow to a trickle, it will eventually fill up and water will spill out over the floor. Setting a goal to reduce our emissions won't work - we need to eliminate them.
If we say 'reduce by 2030' instead of the 'zero by 2050' goal, then we have little hope of getting to zero.
Zero won't come for free - we will have to invest in research, create policies that will drive the markers towards clean energy that are right now more expensive than greenhouse emitting alternatives.
But, it is hard to impose higher costs now in exchange for a better climate later. There is a major incentive to resist cutting their emissions especially in mid to low income countries. The problem is they are worried about how much the solution will cost them.
The Energy Industry
There is nothing wrong with using more energy as long as it's carbon-free. The key to addressing climate change is to make clean energy just as cheap and reliable as what we get from fossil fuels.
The energy industry has huge capital costs that never go away. If you spend 1 bil on a coal plant, your next one won't be any cheaper. And your investors expect money for say 30 years so if someone comes along with new better technology in 10 years time, you're not just going to shut down the old one and build a new one. At least not without a payoff or regulations.
Society also tolerates very little risk in the energy business. We demand reliable electricity, the lights need to come on when we flick the switch. We worry about safety concerns and disasters that may arise.
We have a large understandable incentive to stick to what we know, even if what we know is killing us. What we need to do is change the incentives so that we can build an energy system that is all the things we like (cheap and reliable) and none of the things we don't like.
We need lots of breakthroughs in science and engineering,. We need to build a consensus that doesn't exists and create public policies to push a transition that would not happen otherwise. We need the energy system to stop doing all the things we don't like.
Five Questions to Ask in Every Climate Debate
Convert tons of emission to a percentage of 51 billion
Remember that we need to find solutions for all five activities: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.
Kilowatt = house. Gigawatt = mid-seized city. Hundreds of gigawatts = big, rich country
Consider how much space you're going to need.
Keep the green premiums in mind and ask if they are low enough for middle-income countries to pay.
